


when morning came.

by commonemergency



Category: Dan Howell & Phil Lester - Fandom, Dan Howell - Fandom, Phan, Phil Lester - Fandom, dan and phil, dan howell/phil lester - Fandom
Genre: 2012 timeline, FWB, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Unrequited Love, learning to love again, metaphors out the wazoo, no actual smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 10:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10435680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commonemergency/pseuds/commonemergency
Summary: Dan and Phil have a calculated space between them, a barrier that cannot be crossed, yet they still sleep together and pretend that it doesn't meant anything. Or a story about being in love for the first time and how sometimes it can burn.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this story is a companion piece for my last story, for those who wait. it can be read separately, it's just in the same writing style with a lot of metaphors that may or may not make sense. on another note, a friend had asked me once if i could change things what would i change? and i was thinking well, a lot of things, and nothing at the same time. i thought of past experiences with relationships and friends and it brought me this story.

**i.**

“--- Hypothetically speaking, it’s the end of the world,” it’s nearing the end of another hot, sticky, summer night, Dan and Phil have friends over at their new apartment, they’re wearing cut and rolled up shorts, plaid and cotton shirts, with logos from brands that will never sponsor them, and the conversation- or well, game, has taken a turn. Their friend takes another drink from the beer that’s lost the appeal about ten minutes ago because of the heat, even though the windows are open it doesn’t really help. “You have to grab three things and one person, what and who would you pick?” 

It’s not supposed to be taken seriously, yet some had the tendency to think too much about it, it’s enough to make Dan roll his eyes, he sighs, his legs are sprawled out on the floor and he tilts the bottle back as far as it can go and he gulps and Phil watches him do it and has to look away, because it can’t be that good, and it has to be bad if he’s willing to chug the vodka that tastes like rubbing alcohol. 

“Obviously my mum,” their friend Angela pipes up with the shrill laugh that she has and a snort, it’s not that funny, but they all laugh anyway. “I’d grab the liquor, some cash, and a baseball bat,”

They laugh again because of course. 

She further explains the reasons why and Dan stopped caring about a minute into it. He gets up and grabs some of the plates that they used from the pizza that they bought. He goes into the kitchen to clean up and grabs another beer from the fridge and sits back in his original spot, across from Phil who’s paying attention to Angela because he’s a lovely person like that. And everyone deserves a Phil in their life, and he almost says this in his head a bit with a sharp knife jabbing into him, but he saves the winces for later tonight. 

When their friends go home it’s just Dan and Phil left, and they clean up together, but they’re not completely happy together. There’s a certain tone that Dan has gotten accustomed to using when he’s around Phil, and it’s sad because it used to be just for the camera, to let people know, _they’re not like that,_ and Phil wants to know when it got seeped into Dan, perhaps slowly- quietly, like most change in our life, it doesn’t just happen, it’s there before you realize it. And Dan’s not a terrible guy, but lately he’s just not pleasant to be around. Phil knows why. It’s just unspoken about. 

And when the cleaning is over with Dan and Phil grab another drink and they sit on the couch and watch something because some traditions are still sacred, but there’s a distance between them that’s calculated, and the camera is in the other room but Dan just feels like someone is always watching -- whether the person that’s watching is his old self or his future self but then again Dan’s never really believed in things like that. He’s just him, and he’s not happy with what he’s seeing or who he’s being, but he’s twenty-one and life and the sun has made him bitter. 

Phil places his hand in the middle of the calculated space between them hoping for a second Dan will reach out and grab his hand like it didn’t matter that the world knew slivers of them. Dan’s eyes notice, but his face is towards the TV, not laughing at a funny joke because he’s hyper aware of how close his hand is to his pinky and he balls his hand into a fist and takes another drink of the hot beer, and the buzzing in his head is more prominent. 

And later tonight Dan will kiss Phil and think that it’ll mean nothing when it’s something. Dan doesn’t like using the term friends with benefits because that meant that there was some sort of connection, that it was more, but Dan would argue (internally with himself always) that love is a social construct and it’s just chemicals, and it’s not all a feeling, _maybe_ a wanting, but- _oxytocin._ And he’ll blame it on that, but no one will complain about it because it’s not how it works. It’s not how _they_ work. 

**ii.**

Phil likes making maps on Dan’s back, connecting the freckles to make constellations, his fingertips brush against hickey’s that Phil has left there to remind him of times when they used to call each other _“mine”_. And his mouth will linger a little longer on the freckles, the bruises, and on Dan’s lips like he’s trying to tell him a long secret of how he’d wait until the war was over, with open arms for him.

Dan will kiss him one last time and grab his things and close Phil’s door and walk to his room, and he’ll sleep on his side while holding onto himself pretending that it doesn’t hurt, even though it fucking burns. They were never people that could do “casual”. They both had liked the idea of permanence, but it didn’t matter anymore. 

When morning comes Dan is the first one to wake up and make a cup of tea even though he’s never been much of a tea guy, his grandmum always told him that tea often helps to clear your mind and to also help you when you’re sick. And Dan has felt sick for so long, just that constant feeling of being nauseous even though it’s all internal. He hasn’t actually thrown up but he wants to. It’s an internal kind of sick, it’s not something you can go to the doctors to get looked at, it’s something you _feel_. He’s lost a lot of weight and doesn’t eat as much even though he _could_. He just doesn’t. Sometimes he’ll play around with the word depression but he’ll just tell himself that it’s just a constant sadness.

Phil gets up an hour later and makes his cup of coffee and they’ll go about their daily lives like the night before never happened. They’re good at that. They’re good at pretending that things are okay, and that they’re fine.

Friends will come over and they’ll try to step around the ghosts of tension, fights that lingered in the air with alcohol and laughter and drunken stories. Dan and Phil will talk about the old times that they had together with, “I had a friend once,” and not look at each other as they grab another beer and it’s a drunken mess, but their friends leave happy because nothing happened. It was a typical morning, a slow afternoon, building up to the grand finale of trying to fit in and be “normal, typical” male friends. 

Their hands brush against each others and Dan slips it in his pocket like he’s carrying a dirty secret or a love letter from someone he used to know and love once upon a time, and he’ll take that feeling- that touch on a rainy day. 

“Do you want to grab dinner with me?” Phil asks one night, he’s all ready to go, it’s been a chilly day so he’s doubling up on the jumper and jacket. Dan looks up from the computer and thinks for a moment. 

“You should have asked me earlier,” he says noticing that Phil’s ready. 

Phil takes a breath, “I didn’t- I didn’t know if you would have wanted to go or not,”

“So you ask me now?” Dan laughs a little but there’s no humour or much life to laugh. 

Phil sighs and then grabs his keys off the counter. “Never mind, Dan, I’ll just grab you something and you can pay me back later,” 

When Phil turns Dan throws his head back a little but he doesn’t say anything. 

Sorry ghosts around his lips, the haze of tension, a brink of a tornado or hurricane makes its way back into the living room and follows Phil out the door, into the hall, down the elevator and onto the pavement as he exits out of their apartment. 

Dan does end up paying Phil back a couple days later. 

**iii.**

Dan’s form of sorry is coated with vodka and his mouth, and he knows that it’s a bit of a disappointment and that Phil deserves better, out of all the ways to say sorry to someone this wasn’t it but Phil takes it because his body loves it even if mentally he feels so far away from Dan. 

These are the moments that he holds onto though -- what comes after, when Dan has tired himself out by making Phil a masterpiece of red and purple blotches on his skin, his breathing is a bit jagged and his hair is a little curly but Phil looks up at the ceiling as to not stare at Dan too much, afraid that he’ll go away, and he kind of just wants to stay in this bubble a little longer. 

“I’ll love you forever you know,” Phil isn’t one to say things that he doesn’t mean, especially when it comes to Dan. He knows that by saying this he can make things worse for them. But there was a part of him that needed to say, that needed to let the truth out -- for once on the table. Because they’ve had an unspoken agreement that they won’t ever talk about what happened, or how when the video resurfaces sometimes they don’t make a big deal out of it anymore, they just take it down, and they won’t talk about how during that time it was special, and it was a sacred thing and Dan and Phil can convince themselves that this means nothing when it was something. 

Yet Phil just wants to tell the truth tonight, if only for tonight, and he wants Dan to listen. Because even though he lives with him he misses him more than he’ll ever know. He isn’t sure if Dan is breathing, he quickly peaks at him and sees his chest rising and falling- probably the only consistent thing in Dan’s life was the fact that he can breathe- especially these past couple of months. 

Dan hasn’t said anything yet, and Phil takes another deep breath. Maybe it’s the alcohol even though he didn’t drink that much, maybe it’s the fact that it’ll be Christmas in a couple of days and they won’t seeing each other for a while and when they come back they can pretend that this didn’t happen. He has a moment of bravery and he wants to keep it with him for as long as he can. 

“And uh. Well. I’d wait for you.” Saying the words that he’s been keeping to himself for months is both freeing but terrifying. “Yeah,” he says again, nodding his head, “I’ll wait for you. After all of this is over-” _we’ll be together. You’ll see._ He wants to add but he doesn’t. 

Dan reaches his hand out like he’s trying to touch something, perhaps invisible stars or the moon off of a dull ceiling. 

“You shouldn’t...” Dan speaks so quietly, his voice just barely an audible whisper but Phil hears it. Dan gets up now, and he looks at Phil like a man who’s running out of time, and he grabs his things like he always does, and he leaves like he always does. If there was something consistent that Phil could always count on with Dan it was the art of leaving.

 **iv.**

Phil doesn’t go out for lunch much, but today an old friend from university came to town and he wanted to see Phil so he agreed.

They’re at Starbucks and Phil ordered something sweet but added an extra shot of espresso since he didn’t get much sleep the past couple of nights since that night. He’s supposed to be leaving to go back home for Christmas but for some reason he feels himself delaying it, perhaps hoping that Dan would change his mind. Maybe someday. 

Him and his friend have gotten to talking about past mistakes, like the one time that they had both been convinced to go to a club but it ended up being the worst and longest nights of their life. His friends wallet had gotten stolen, Phil dropped his cellphone into a puddle of water, the guy that invited him had gotten so drunk he couldn’t walk and come to find out that he had left his shoes somewhere. York wasn’t much of a party town but that night it had seemed like everyone was out and it seemed never ending. 

They could laugh about it now that it’s years later but it brings his friend to ask, “Do you ever just wish some things never happened?” It’s a bit rhetorical and any other day Phil wouldn’t think too much of it and agree, yeah of course. His mind would wonder to all those times that he had done something stupid in primary school that he wished he could take back but that felt like lifetimes ago, and he’s stuck here in a current situation where that’s all he’s been thinking about. 

“Yeah, I guess,” he says with a shrug, “But I mean- it would change the future,” even slightly, something would change and that small percentage of it changing him not meeting Dan- he wouldn’t risk it. 

His friend takes a sip of his tea and then nods his head, “That’s true... but _if_ you could go back in time would you want to change anything? Or maybe I should say- would you warn your future self about the things that are coming? Like, for example, that one night. I’d tell my future self to place my wallet in my front pocket. And I’d warn you about your phone. It’d be small changes, I guess,” he muses now but Phil is too lost in his thoughts. “It couldn’t change _that_ much,”

Phil wants to tell him that he’d keep some of his secrets to himself. He’d talk about his feelings more instead of bottling them up. He’d tell himself about Dan, that they wouldn’t be something anymore- much less friends, and he’d want to change things. He’d want to send him a warning of the things that would happen. He didn’t know. 

Because it was hell. There was so much pain in loving someone. It was so easy in the beginning, it didn’t hurt as much, the only thing that ever blocked them was the distance. Now it’s a different kind of distance and Phil couldn’t see past the haze that lingered between them. 

“I think there’s always some things that we’d want to warn our future selves about but I think it’s too dangerous to play with, if it were real. But… yeah, there are things I’d change,” He gives his friend a smile, holding the mug gently as it being his only source of warmth right now. 

“At least it’s not real,” his friend laughs now and they leave it at that. 

_Yeah_ , Phil thinks, _it’s not real._

**v.**

__Phil had always thought of love from a scale of one to ten, it’s funny when he thought about it medically. It’s what they ask you about your pain level, he’d always say that he was about a two or even a four if it’s been a bad week on top of the pain that he’s already feeling. Meeting Dan he didn’t even believe in the scale anymore because that love that he felt for Dan was overwhelming but blissful. He supposes that’s the start of it, falling in love with your whole heart for the first time, it feels like something inside of you might explode, and it almost makes you feel like you can do anything or be anything -- at least that’s how Dan had made him feel._ _

Dan had made him think that he was special, and that he was _amazing_ , and worth something. Because for a long time he had felt almost jaded, and maybe once or twice had he ever felt something _real_ it had ended before it ever began, and he thought that there was maybe something wrong with them, maybe he was ordinary, or said the wrong thing too much, but when Dan had found him it was like they both had these broken pieces that had come together to make something beautiful, because Dan had felt the same way, and he had been loved before, he had those rough edges that Phil had never really gotten from a relationship, in comparison to Dan he was quite soft and palpable, and for Phil’s first time for being in love? He didn’t understand that pain that people talked about in all of those love songs because Dan had never given him a reason to understand it until now. 

__So if you were to ask Phil now about his pain level on a scale of one to ten, a couple months or even days ago he’d tell you that he felt like a good eight or nine but on those days when all there is silence he’ll verge on that ten._ _

__Perhaps having reached that almost ten made it real._ _

__It’s Christmas now and Phil had opened a midnight present with his family, and they’re all scurrying off to bed awaiting for “Santa” to arrive, even though they’re adults now, it’s still nice to have something to believe in._ _

__Phil grabs a cup of water and a biscuit and heads to his bedroom, he’s gotten text messages from friends wishing him Merry Christmas, and then he sees a text message from Dan that was sent about thirty minutes ago. They don’t text each other when they’re away anymore, so it’s a bit odd for Phil to be getting a text message from Dan. He’s almost scared to open it. He takes the drink of water and then he clicks on the message._ _

_you said you'd wait for me, yeah? i'm holding you to that._

_merry christmas phil. i'll be seeing you._

When they were still long distance Phil had come up with a way of saying goodbye without actually saying goodbye- because goodbyes had hurt too much and it felt permanent, while Dan and Phil were permanent people they weren’t permanent about their goodbyes. Phil had texted Dan, “ _I’ll be seeing you,_ ” when he left that first time and throughout their travels one of them had always texted the other that as a way to say, it’s not forever, i love you and i’ll be seeing you soon. Though it had come to an abrupt stop until now. The distance between them had been 221.8 miles, Phil had counted. For the first time in a long time the distance didn’t seem that bad between them. It felt like there was something for him to hold on to. 

Phil replies back.

_I'll be seeing you._

__They were 221.8 miles apart, but this time with the distance? It didn’t seem so bad._ _

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos are appreciated.
> 
> talk to me on tumblr or twitter! 
> 
> both are: **@nihilismdan.**


End file.
